


everything we do is stitched with this colour

by raven (singlecrow)



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: M/M, Sewing, Tailoring, he has 183 of them on file, look yes he isn't JUST a tailor but he does make wedding dresses for the entire station
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-15
Updated: 2020-11-15
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:48:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27580919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/singlecrow/pseuds/raven
Summary: On his way back to the habitat ring, he wonders what it would be like to walk home hand in hand with Garak; to fall asleep with him; to stay.Garak teaches Julian to sew.
Relationships: Julian Bashir/Elim Garak, Kira Nerys/Keiko O'Brien/Miles O'Brien
Comments: 59
Kudos: 182





	everything we do is stitched with this colour

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to soupytwist and Elly.

Garak is appalled to learn Julian can’t sew. “You’re a doctor,” he says, as though that explains all his disbelief. It takes Julian a second to remember enough about the history of human medicine to figure out what he’s getting at.

“Well,” he says awkwardly, "we do have dermal regenerators now.”

Garak looks unimpressed, and Julian expects him to launch into some baroque explanation about how Cardassian doctors continue to seal wounds and tie off tubes the old-fashioned way, complete with melodramatic metaphorical underpinning. The ties that bind flesh are the ties that bind the state, or something.

But Garak just holds out needle and thread in both hands like a gift. “Well, my dear doctor,” he says. “You must certainly learn.”

*

It becomes something else they do, on top of talking about literature in the replimat, and the other thing. Julian tries not think about the other thing, but it is part of the quiet rhythm of his life nonetheless, like night shifts and twenty-six hour days and Friday night dinners with Miles, Keiko, Kira and Dax. Keiko always says that at least one meal a week shouldn't come out of a replicator, and her excellent cooking punctuates the talk and laughter and good-natured bickering. Afterwards, Miles goes to fetch Molly from the babysitter and Jadzia stumbles off to meet Worf off his evening shift on the _Defiant_. Julian leaves alone, walking down towards the deserted Promenade as though on an aimless late-evening stroll, as though he didn't know exactly where he was going, and why. Garak meets him at the door to the shop, locks the door behind them, and they fuck without speaking behind the racks of Bajoran formalwear. They do this at other times, for other reasons––pain; exile; life in wartime––but Friday nights are different. Friday nights are regular, like senior staff dinners and the station's course and spin. 

It's just something else, Julian supposes. Something in his life that isn't Starfleet or medicine or the sweet wine that Keiko makes herself from the fruit in the station arboretum. When they're done he dusts himself off and goes back to his quarters, noting that he doesn't have to set an alarm for the morning. He gave up his right to uninterrupted weekends when he joined the service, but this time it's happened by chance: two whole days without duty shifts or on-calls. He has a note from Garak suggesting how he might spend it.

Julian smiles; it's not like he had other plans. On his way down to the Promenade he meets Miles, who laughs when Julian tells him where he's going.

"Sewing by hand," he says, shaking his head. Miles is as easy to read as a book, Julian thinks, affectionately. He's clearly about to say something about how Garak is as much a plain simple tailor as he, Miles O’Brien, is a Cardassian spy. But for some reason he thinks better of it. “Like Molly's favourite," he says.

“Non sequiturs are the first symptom of stroke, Miles,” Julian says.

“You shut up,” Miles says. “I _meant_ , Molly’s favourite dress is hand-sewn. Garak made it for her on her last birthday. He said sparkly green is all the rage with little girls on Cardassia Prime."

Ziyal, surprisingly, had been able to confirm that. It _is_ a pretty dress, Julian thinks, and smiles again, not able to help it. 

His own first attempts at sewing aren’t nearly so pretty, running stitches wandering crookedly around scraps of fabric. Garak looks on without rancour and fetches enough material for him to try again. After Julian has massacred another handful of offcuts they call it a day and go for dinner at Quark's. Garak talks about how darning will be a sensible next step, it's so useful for mending knitwear, while Julian listens contentedly. He remembers, later, how easy it was to tell Miles about _this_ : this lazy nothing of an afternoon, gentle talk and glittery cloth. The other thing is what he can never speak of.

*

“You have trouble integrating the elements of your life,” is what Sigmund Freud has to say about it.

It’s not really Sigmund Freud. It’s not even a hologram of Sigmund Freud; it’s a mass of faux-therapeutic platitudes dressed as a white-haired avuncular type. Julian only came in here to get the holosuite programme deleted and to tell Quark’s punters that if they're feeling peculiar they need Federation psychiatric care. But he paid for the hour and ran the programme and now here he is, being forced to contemplate his unintegrated existence. "I do not," he says, pathetically, to no answer. Not-Freud just harrumphs and strokes his beard.

Julian stands there for a minute more, trying to think of another sparkling rejoinder, before he gives up and goes back downstairs. Let the poor buggers who've paid for tonight's holosuite time get their semblance of comfort; he can talk to the Federation regulatory authorities in the morning, and in the meantime he needs a drink. In the bar, Jadzia and Miles have convinced Kira to join them for a game of darts. Her centre of gravity isn't what it used to be but she's still doing better than Miles.

“If you’re here to make a fuss, don't,” she says to Julian, waving around the drink in her hand. “Maybe alcohol harms _human_ pregnancies, but—"

“Not Bajoran ones, and one glass doesn't harm human ones as much as people think,” Julian says. "I’m here to relax, same as you.”

"Good," Kira says darkly. In another tone, she adds, “I am doing okay, right? The baby will be fine with me?"

Julian is about to spout off some reassuring nonsense, before he sees the look in he eyes and remembers Kira's mother died in a Cardassian labour camp when she was three. “I don’t know,” he says, with the scrupulous honesty she deserves. “No one has ever done this before. But you’re strong, Kira Nerys, and Miles and Keiko’s son will be strong like you.”

“Thank you, Doctor,” she says formally, and after they've each had another glass of spring wine, she’s back to calling him Julian and they're laughing about something that happened earlier that day on the Promenade.

“Vedek Rakt was so embarrassed,” Kira says. “He said that if the entire station had seen him in his underwear then he ought to resign from the Assembly for bringing it into disrepute. His husband said the Prophets probably just want him to get a sense of humour and have Garak take in his pants."

Julian laughs and gets her another drink, and she's tipsy when she finishes it but not so much she can't smash Miles again at darts. It's a good evening, a sweet evening, like so many Julian has spent here on this Cardassian monstrosity of a station at the edge of contested space. When it's over, Miles and Kira wander home together and Julian goes to see Garak again, knowing he's still up from the single light visible between the shutters. The space within looks very different from how it did in the afternoon, transformed by semi-darkness into angles and shadows. Garak lets him in without speaking. When the door is closed behind them, he takes Julian into the space behind the racks and pushes him carefully up against the bulkhead. "I suppose," he says, in measured tones, "this _is_ what you want."

It is, although Julian can't articulate why tonight, why now. Part of his mind, the part that understood precisely what Not-Freud meant, is thinking about Miles and Kira walking back to the habitat ring hand-in-hand, tipsy and happy and together.

"Yes," he says, and Garak doesn't ask any more questions. He pushes down on Julian's shoulders with a casual strength. Julian gives into it, ends up on his knees with his mouth stuffed with Betazoid cloth to stop any sound from carrying onto the Promenade. It's good, in its way, and over quickly. When he's putting his uniform back on, his eye is caught by something on Garak's worktable. The dress, if that's what it is, is spread out haphazardly on the bench, as though Garak set it down at Julian's knock. "What were you working on?" he asks. 

They don't normally pause for conversation, either. But Garak's eyes on him are suddenly as fond as they were earlier, during the long hours Julian spent stabbing himself in the thumb with a needle. "A wedding dress for Commander Basaker," he says, turning it right way out to show Julian the embroidery on the hem. "It's a Trill custom to sew the beloved's name somewhere in the pattern."

"That's lovely," Julian says, admiring the fine, neat calligraphy. Impulsively, he kisses Garak on the cheek. On his way back to the habitat ring, he wonders what it would be like to walk home hand in hand with Garak; to fall asleep with him; to stay. 

He can't imagine it. He hurries home without pause for further thought.

*

"You need to be more relaxed," Garak says suddenly. "The way you're gripping it, you'll do yourself an injury." 

This is their fourth sewing lesson, following on from darning, running stitches, backstitch and buttons. Julian is sitting on a low stool in the middle of the shop, hunched over the two pieces of cloth he's trying to join together. Garak gets up with a huff of exasperation, walks around Julian and kneels on the floor, his movements as gracefully constrained as always. His arms come up, encircling Julian from behind. Julian inhales sharply and leans back into the hold. A Cardassian's body temperature is lower than a human's, but he can feel that Garak's skin is heated by the passage of blood beneath it. He feels warm, slightly dizzy, as Garak's hands cover his, taking the needle and thread, then repositioning Julian's wrists and forearms. 

"There," he murmurs, his voice subtle in Julian's ear. "Much better. We don't want you getting a repetitive strain."

"No," Julian says, the word only half-spoken. This isn't like the other thing, sex in the dark, without words or intimacy. It's as close and intimate as a kiss. When the door of the shop opens, he's startled, bereft, as though something precious has been snatched from him.

"Garak," Odo says, then pauses. "Am I interrupting something?"

"Not at all," Garak says. He doesn't stand up immediately, and when he does his fingers trace a line against Julian's shoulder and neck, claw-like nails nipping against the skin. "I was just teaching the good doctor here how to sew."

“So it seems.” Odo is deadpan as ever. To Julian’s surprise, he smiles, so quick and slight that anyone else might have missed it. "I need your help, Garak."

That sounds like he needs help apprehending criminals, but it turns out that Odo has been having back pain, now he’s a solid. Garak has some suggestions about alterations, so the cloth doesn’t pull. Julian listens to him talk while keeping his head down, concentrating on his sewing. It occurs to him that Odo is Garak’s friend, inasmuch as anyone on the station is. Julian hides this from his friends, but Garak doesn’t. 

When they've agreed a timescale and price, Odo leaves again without a second glance at Julian, as though he's already understood everything he needs to. Julian takes a deep breath, thinking about how it felt to have Garak close to him in broad daylight with a customer on the doorstep. "Come over for dinner this weekend," he says. "We can argue about _The Never-Ending Sacrifice_ in my quarters for a change." 

Garak looks surprised for a moment, then nods. "Yes," he says. "I'd like that."

*

The promised dinner is a tagine with ras-el-hanout and yamok sauce. Julian enjoys it, and the discussion that follows about both _The Never-Ending Sacrifice_ and the poetry of the Cardassian Aklesian period. Having dispensed with that subject, they have sex in Julian's bed. Afterwards, Garak is shivering, and Julian gathers the covers back onto the bed, feeling a chill of his own. "I'm sorry," he says. "If you didn't really want this…"

"My dear," Garak says, with loving irritation, "there are few in this world who can compel me into anything I don't want, and I regret to inform you that you are not a member of that illustrious company."

Julian laughs, the tension dissipating. It's not Garak who's uncomfortable, he realises, but himself. Having Garak here, now, with all the scaly tension of his body uncoiled in this room full of Julian's discarded clothes and unwashed mugs, is at once deeply unsettling and part of the rightness of things. "I suppose that's right."

"No suppose about it," Garak says. "Although I'm afraid I can't stay. Much work and very little time in which to do it."

Julian grins. "How _is_ the dress for Commander Basaker going?"

"Fine," Garak says, with distaste. He had to postpone Julian's lesson on how to patch trousers on account of a last-minute colour scheme crisis. "Now it's the four bridespeople that are causing the trouble. The Sulamid particularly, bless zir hearts." 

"Very difficult, tailoring for cephalopods," Julian agrees, dippily. He isn't surprised that Garak is leaving him to himself for the rest of the night, tentacle couture notwithstanding; he understands that for Garak, sleeping in the presence of another person represents a greater trust than their years of acquaintance can yet sustain. If this years-long review of Cardassian literature has taught him anything, it's that you can never escape your own history. It's a lesson he was well-primed to learn. 

"There must be other work, of course," Julian says, now it's on his mind. Amid this soft-edged domesticity, it's unsettling to be suddenly thinking about the Dominion invasion of Cardassia, and what small threads of information may yet be pulled from it. "Other things that keep you busy."

Garak merely smiles, and doesn't even bother with the _plain, simple tailor_ line. He departs without further ceremony and Julian makes the bed before he gets back into it, humming happily to himself all the while. They don't meet for a few days after that, but on Friday night, as the O'Briens' dinner is breaking up, Julian walks down with Jadzia to Ops. "I'm going to see Garak," he says. "It's on my way."

Jadzia gives him a long, appraising look. It's much too late in the day for lunch. It's too late for anything except night shifts, nightcaps and bed.

"I see," she says, and Julian has no doubt that she does.

*

Julian learns how to sew a straight seam. His stitches become neater, his darning less of a nightmare. The Bajoran Time of Cleansing quiets the Promenade for a few weeks, so the shop feels like an oasis of activity among gentle desertion. Julian and Miles spend a lot of time at Quark's, in a transparent effort to keep it in business. Garak doesn't play darts, but when he's lining up a throw, Julian sometimes feels himself watched from the upper levels. It isn't obtrusive, and he never looks up. 

Backstitch; more darning; the basics of how to read a pattern. Garak comes to him, some nights, and on others Julian goes to him. Julian turns the heat up in his own quarters, then back down again; it amuses him to see Garak huddled in the covers, driven by a motivation that a child could understand. Eventually he turns up with a quilt of his own, claiming it's something a customer never picked up. Julian doubts that a Federation or Bajoran customer commissioned that intricate patchwork in Cardassian greys and blues, but doesn't comment. Instead he lets Garak show him how the pieces are stitched together, his long fingers lingering on the seams as they do on the lines of Julian's body. Listening to him, Julian understands that this, more than words or other intimacy, is the most truthful thing Garak has ever done for him. Whether or not he was always a tailor, he can't bely a skill that's now part of his muscle memory, that's part of what he is. He wonders if this, after all, is what Garak wanted to teach him: that the language of the body is hard to mistranslate. 

Cross-stitch. Knitting, which Julian hates, and refuses to try again. How to thread the needle of a sewing machine. 

And then: a bad day. A civilian freighter hits one of the upper pylons, breaching the hull. Plain human error, rather than the Dominion or the Maquis, but that doesn't save the three-person work crew, crushed or bled out before anyone has a chance to react. Julian signs off the death certificates late at night and goes blindly to Garak's shop, thinking to lose himself in another kind of violence, to let Garak push him across the worktable and do whatever he wanted, as they used to before.

But Garak takes Julian home, replicates tea and turns up the heat, talking all the while about the plot of an early work by the Cardassian writer Iloja of Prim. It takes a long time for him to fully explain the literary complexities and by the time Garak's winding down, Julian realises that he's come through to somewhere else. Grief and pain have had a chance to wash through him, leaving him melancholy but calm and still.

"Garak," he says, as Garak finally trails off. "You'll stay with me till morning, won't you."

Garak doesn't speak for a minute, his expression unreadable. "Yes," he says, at last. "If you want me to."

"I do," Julian says. He drinks the last of the tea, and thinks he'll be able to sleep.

*

Commander Basaker has another last-minute change of heart about her dress and it's only just finished by the morning of the wedding. Garak throws a tantrum, but it fits like a dream. The reception is held in the Trill style, featuring fire spinners and a Bolian swing band, with half the station invited. Julian frets through the evening shift, forces himself to stop overthinking it and asks Garak to come along with him. 

When they finally get there, it's lovely. Quark's has been rearranged so there's a dancefloor underneath the banners, and it's late enough for everyone to be dancing, with a greater or lesser degree of willingness: Worf and Jadzia; Sisko and Kasidy; Rom and Leeta, proceeding in awkward circles around the floor. Keiko and Kira are attempting a cautious turn. Basaker is at the centre, outshining the whole room in that dress. Even her new wife, who chose to make Garak's life easier by getting married in her dress uniform, is wholly eclipsed. She doesn't look as though she minds. 

"Julian," Miles says, as Julian comes up to the bar. He looks flushed and happy from dancing with Molly. "Just take a look at her hand, will you?"

"Of course," Julian says, dropping to be at eye level with Molly. She has a small cut on her palm, from attacking a piece of cake too enthusiastically with a table knife. Julian heals it with the dermal regenerator he always carries in his pocket and kisses her hand for good measure. "There, all done."

Molly beams. Garak, who like all Cardassians adores children, takes her off for another energetic twirl around the floor. 

"Thanks," Miles says, looks at Garak and Molly, then back at Julian. "Julian, are you here with Garak? _With_ him, I mean?"

He's figured it out, finally. Julian is pretty sure that Miles O'Brien is his favourite person in the universe, barring one or two. "Yes," he says. Tentatively, he adds: "Is that a problem?"

"Eh," Miles says, which isn't _yes_. He's gone to pester Quark for a beer by the time Garak comes back, having delivered Molly safely to Sisko for the next dance. Garak joins Julian in leaning against the bar, watching the movement of people around the floor.

"I've been wondering," Julian says, putting away the dermal regenerator that was still in his hand. "You asked me why I don't know how to sew, even though I'm a doctor."

"Yes," Garak says. "In Cardassia—"

"Yes, yes, stitching together the body politic," Julian says impatiently. "Why do _you_ know how to sew, Garak? It doesn't seem like it would be, ah, useful. In your former profession."

To his credit, Garak doesn't try his usual line about how it's _something I just picked up_. All these weeks and months have given the lie to that. "I learned at my mother's knee," he says instead, which makes Julian snort. He only knows Garak had a mother at all from the fact Cardassians don't reproduce asexually. 

That said, it turned out he was telling the truth about children's fashions on Cardassia. Stranger things have happened.

"And," Garak says, pauses, begins again. "I can stitch with skin, as well."

"Yes," Julian breathes, his eyes still on the twirling dancers. "Of course you can."

He has a vivid imagination. He can think of the purposes such a skill might be put to, in service of the body politic. 

"Is that a problem?" Garak asks, just as Julian asked Miles, a minute earlier. 

Julian shakes his head, then nods: not yes or no. It seems to him for a moment that he can feel the station's movement through space, and its corresponding passage through history. The Cardassians occupied Bajor for fifty years, brutalising the people and razing the land. Garak, who made a party dress for Julian's best friend's five-year-old daughter, spent a former life inserting sharp edges into flesh. Some parts of Julian's life resist integration.

Garak says nothing, understanding his silence. As the music intensifies, the hem of Commander Basaker's wedding dress flips upwards. For a second, Julian sees it: the name of the beloved, written in thread.

**Author's Note:**

> the title comes, a little mutilated, from WS Merwin.


End file.
